Vocabulary Update

Here are some new terms I've come across in the past several months:

Getaway day: the last day of a loadout, when the final truck comes after the 10 a.m. coffee break and the stagehands leave early.
stay guy: The stagehand kept late for overtime when the other stagehands are cut at 5 p.m.
Broadway wrap--wrapping a prop gift box so that the lid can be taken off without ripping the paper. This enables the propman to use the box over and over.

Joke of the Day: Local #1 Interview

Despite being a fourth-generation member of Local #1 IATSE, the Theatrical Protective Union of New York City, I am embarrassed to say that I had not heard this joke. I had to hear it from a brother in Local #600 IATSE, which is the camera operators' local.

To understand this joke, you must know that Local #1 was once a fathers' and sons' local, where members could nominate one man (and it was all men back then) to join the local, and if you had two sons, you'd marry the second one to a local member with only daughters, so your son's new father-in-law could nominate him.

The joke is a man walks into his Local #1 interview. The union man interviewing him looks at him sternly and says, "I have two questions for you: Who's your dad and how is he?"

--Dylan Foley

Term of the Moment: Stay guy

stay guy--a stay guy is the stagehand who is kept for overtime while the other stagehands are sent home at the end of the straight-time call.

Term of the Moment: Getaway day

Getaway day--The last day of the load-in, where there may only be one truck to load. If the head is gutsy enough, he or she will let the crew go early, maybe after coffee, at 10:30am.

Term of the Moment: To get feathers

to get feathers to give oneself feathers, to give oneself stripes--Often on a small crew, the loudest and least competent person will try to start giving orders to the other stagehands, giving themselves feathers or stripes. Sometimes, a designer who doesn't know who the players are will take an incompetent stagehand and give them responsibilities they can't handle. When the stagehand gets feathers, they can become all puffed up. "Bill became insufferable when the designer gave him fathers. He eventually crashed and burned."

I think of George Carlin's "Indian Sergeant" comedy routine when I think of feathers and stripes.

Term of the Moment: To Wildhorn, Wildhorned

To Wildhorn--So Frank Wildhorn has had another mutilated show on the Broadway boards. "His "Bonnie and Clyde" just went down after a savaging by the New York Times reviewer Ben Brantley last week. I was telling people that "Bonnie and Clyde" was gunned down by sheriffs' deputies from three Texas counties. In March, Wildhorn's retelling of "Alice in Wonderland, a hip-hop fable called "Wonderland," also closed very quickly. My new term, "to wildhorn" a musical is when a reviewer hates the music and body of work of a particular composer. The reviewer will damn the new musical with the composer's previously detested work. A sample sentence would be, "Ben Brantley doesn't like James Lapine, so he always wildhorns his new musicals."

Term of the Moment: Road Whore

Road Whore: A stagehand who stays on the road, moving from show to show, with no plans to settle in one city. No sexual connotations, should be used for both sexes.